Jill Schramm/MDN Minot Public School Superintendent Mark Vollmer presents information on Minot North construction to the liaison committee Thursday.

Progress on the construction of the new Minot North High School is on track, with the remodeling of the existing building on the property nearing completion.

Minot Public School Superintendent Mark Vollmer provided that project update to the city-county-parks-school liaison committee Thursday.

Vollmer said the heavy lift now is occurring on music classrooms, auditoriums, some career and technical classrooms, gymnasium space, cafeteria, locker rooms and the pool area. He said the stainless steel pool will be set in place soon. The pool area is designed so an aquatic center can be added if the community wants to do so at some future time, he added.

“All in all, we’re looking at a total of about 115,000 square feet of existing structure and 125,000 square feet of new construction,” he said.

Work also is progressing on the North Sports Complex.

“By spring, this area will be ready to go and we will be having track practices at this location in the spring as well as soccer practices,” Vollmer said.

The new school is scheduled to open this coming fall. The operation of another school facility comes with a cost, which the board has been assessing as it prepares to budget for the next year.

“We’re weighing out many of the financial issues that surround this,” Vollmer said. “We always said we are going to need to find efficiencies, and those efficiencies are going to come in a variety of ways.”

Among board discussions has been the closure of Bell and McKinley elementaries, which are both small schools.

McKinley has 86 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, of which only 46 are children who live within the school’s attendance area. Some class sections are as small as eight students, Vollmer said.

“That area was hugely impacted by the flood,” he said. “There was a lot of movement out of that area. Some of that area has now been bought out for flood protection.”

Bell has about 90 students in K-5.

The shift to two high schools and the conversion of Central Campus into a middle school will create a need to realign the middle school system, too. Jim Hill Middle School, with almost 900 students, and Erik Ramstad Middle School, with nearly 750 students, each will have about 500 students after the change, as will the new middle school at Central Campus. Portable classrooms will be eliminated, Vollmer said.

He explained the feeder system will have students from Jim Hill going to Magic City Campus and Erik Ramstad Middle School students going to Minot North. McKinley and Roosevelt students who move on to Central Campus for middle school will go to Minot North. Other Central Campus middle school students will go to Magic City.

Vollmer added an enrollment drop of 100 students this year has had little impact as it has occurred at various grade levels and facilities in a system of about 7,700 students. However, he said, the loss will cost the district more than $1 million in state funding at a time when the district is currently deficit spending by about $2.5 million.